Russians
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On Keepin' it Real this week, Cam takes us back to 1988 when he and his team lined up to upset the world order in an all out international rowing competition. It was one for the record books. ----- It was the spring of 1989 in Augusta, Georgia. I was a member of the Tulane University Rowing team and we were there to train for Spring Break. Crew teams from across the south and many of the elite crew teams from the northeast came to Augusta and this perfect stretch of the Savannah River to train during the week and race at the end of the week. A call went out that the organizers were throwing...
info_outline
Top Hat
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On this week's Keepin It Real, Cam Marston has just returned from a few days in Fort Lauderdale. It's a different world down there, Cam says. One that he might have envied at one point in his life. ------ My wife and I returned from Ft Lauderdale Saturday. We were there for a corporate event where I was giving a speech. My client generously offered an extra couple of nights in the host hotel and our room was on the 26thfloor overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. I watched the sun rise each morning as I sipped coffee and read. It began as a faint glow on the horizon to a disk coming out of the water....
info_outline
Regrets
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On this week’s Keepin It Real, Cam hopes you have no regrets from Thanksgiving. And if you do, that you learn from them. ----- Well, how’d it go yesterday? Any family flare ups? Any thoughts you wish you’d kept to yourself? Thanksgiving gatherings are famous for finding people’s boiling points and the election having been just a few weeks ago, some are still gloating and others still licking their wounds. Any regrets from yesterday? I heard Dan Pink speak last week at a conference in San Francisco. He’s a New York Times best-selling author and his most recent book is called The Power...
info_outline
'Tis The Season
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On this week's Keepin It Real, Cam Marston wants you to know he's NOT A CYNIC. But there are things this time of year that just kinda get to him... ----- ‘Tis the season for pensive and sappy messages. I’m so sorry but it’s true. They’re appearing in TV commercials, in client and vendor emails. Letters received in the mail about the joys of the season and now’s the time to be grateful and all that. I hate being a cynic, but it all appears to be virtue signaling to me. The people I know sending these messages are savage businesspeople and it’s like times running out and they’re...
info_outline
Cats
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On the way home from Oxford Saturday, Cam and his family stopped at a service station which led to him thinking about what NOT to put on his Christmas list. ----- For years I had my children convinced I was allergic to cats. I told them the reason we couldn’t have a cat as a pet was that my head would explode in a fiery ball. They wanted a cat. They asked regularly and finally accepted that I was allergic. I’m not allergic to cats. I’m not sure how they found out, but the cat-pet requests are back. Frankly, I want nothing more to do with anything that requires fuel or any sort of...
info_outline
Owls
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On this week's Keepin It Real, Cam tells us about some early morning attacks that are happening in his part of town. You'd be surprised at who is doing the attacking. ----- On the top of the Tangles Hair Salon on Bit and Spur Road in Mobile sits a hat and a headlamp with its light on. The headlamp is the type that an early morning jogger wears before the sun comes up. How it got up there is a heck of a story. Dennison Crocker jogs before daylight nearly every morning. His headlamp lights the way. One dark morning near Bit and Spur Road, a giant thunk, thud, and whoosh caught Dennison off...
info_outline
Can I Transfer?
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On this week's Keepin' It Real, Cam recalls a time when he was very much out of his element and was slightly afraid for his life. ----- About midway through the fourth quarter of Alabama’s loss to Vanderbilt, my son, who is a student at the University, sent me a text. It read, “Can I transfer?” I laughed. As a Tulane student we were fond of saying that on Saturdays in the fall, the New Orleans Superdome hosted a cocktail party for students to mix and mingle in the stands. Occasionally we would look up and notice that a football game was going on in front of us, but we never let it...
info_outline
FBI
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On this week's Keepin It Real, Cam Marston tells us about a bomb maker he met who sends the bombs he makes to his friends. Oddly enough, you and I should be happy he's doing it. ----- There’s a man on the outskirts of Mobile who spends a good part of his days making bombs. He uses items he finds around town and buys from retail stores. He then sends his bombs to his buddies to see if they can disarm them. It’s a game and, believe me, it’s a game you and I should be grateful they’re playing. I’m participating in a seven-week course called the FBI Citizens Academy. For two hours each...
info_outline
Infantilized
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On this week's Keeping It Real, Cam Marston reacts to a book review about society and how we're raising kids. It's not the kids fault, Cam says, it's definitely the parents. ----- The Economist magazine reviewed a book called Infantilised: How Our Culture Killed Adulthood. The author, Keith Hayward, argues that western society is keeping kids less mature than previous generations. He tells of a young lady who insisted on spelling the word hamster with a P. When corrected repeatedly, she called her mom and put her on speakerphone to tell her boss not to be so mean. That’s laughable, but...
info_outline
Lucy At The Vet
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
On this week's Keepin It Real, Cam's family dog heard what he said to the vet. And she has something to say about it. ----- When I walked through the back door our dog, Lucy, looked at me as if to say “you and I have some unfinished business.” Lucy had been feeling bad. She was lethargic and had thrown up in four or five places in the house. On the rugs, of course. I got to my hands and knees to try to clean them up. It was nasty. She definitely wasn’t herself and my wife, who Lucy seems to regard as The Kind One, took her to the vet. My wife texted that afternoon saying, “Please go...
info_outlineMy friends and I attend an organ recital together each week. It's not what you think...
-------------------
The pickle ball bug has bitten. A buddy put together a group of guys all about the same age to play each Wednesday evening not long ago. We all showed up, most of us knew each other, debated the rules for a while, and we got started. It’s now a regular thing.
Each time we gather we shake hands, we catch up and bit, and each of us, whether we’re asked or not, goes through what’s called The Organ Recital. It’s a part of what happens when men of a certain age or older gather. Maybe women, too, but I can only speak to what the men do. We talk about what hurts on our body, how well or poorly we’ve been sleeping, who we know that is sick. We talk about digestion. About what foods are kind to us and which ones we struggle with. Which spices upset our stomach. Which medicines help and which ones don’t seem to do anything at all. It’s the Organ Recital. It doesn’t last long. Usually someone says, “Hey, enough. We sound like old men. Let’s play.” And that ends it. And then we start putting on knee braces, patella tendon straps, and tendonitis sleeves. It’s so sad.
My father has a golf group that has set up rules around their Organ Recitals. He and his buddies have played golf every Friday morning for the past decade or more. Their rule is that once the last putt falls into the cup on the first hole, the organ recital must end. It’s a rule they’ve all embraced. However, my father says, many of his friends are now nearly deaf and they keep giving their organ recitals anyway because they can’t hear anyone telling them to stop. It’s the rare privilege of the hard of hearing – not being able to hear when you’re being admonished.
My dad is quite the pickle baller himself. He plays several days a week at the Via Senior Center in Mobile. He’s got a regular crowd and they pair up to play and then they swap teams and they do it for hours. Men and women. He invited me a few weeks back. I guessed I’d be the youngest person there, which was true, and that I’d have an unfair advantage because of that, which was untrue. I got my tail beaten repeatedly. These so-called seniors are savage pickle ball players and what they may lack in speed they make up with precise ball placement. At one point my 85-year-old father and I were playing together and across the net was an 83-year-old lady and her sixty-ish year-old daughter. Father son versus mother daughter. The mom had a wicked serve and at any time could place the ball within a millimeter of wherever she wanted it. My dad and I just barely won, and I walked off the court laughing at the thought that my youth – which is very relative – would create any advantage.
At some point in the match, I lunged for a well-placed shot from the 82-year-old mother and pulled something in my lower back. I soldiered on, unwilling to admit to myself that an 82-year-old was making a fool of me on the pickle ball court. I, of course, dutifully reported my injury the next week at my pickle ball group’s Organ Recital. But when asked about the opponent who did this to me, I kept things a bit vague.
I’m Cam Marston and I’m just trying to Keep it Real.